Hey, Devan here.
I’m writing this from my Brooklyn apartment as my dog, Ollie, lies behind me. If you follow me on Instagram, you already know I’m pretty obsessed with Ollie—in a way that’s somewhat embarrassing to admit (God was really in her bag when she invented dogs).
As someone who loves dogs, I was starting to feel guilty—once again—about having Ollie live in the city, especially as I kept coming across TikToks of people moving their dogs to the suburbs for a “better life.” Would my 80-pound dog be happier in a house with a fenced-in backyard? Am I ruining his life just because I want to be a city boy?
So, for this episode, I wanted to tackle a question I’ve been dreading: Are suburban dogs happier than city dogs?
(YouTube, Apple/Spotify/etc. here)
To find out, I spoke with one of the leading dog cognition experts, Alexandra Horowitz. She heads the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard and is the author of Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know. Importantly for our purposes, she’s also someone who has lived with dogs in both the city and the country. We also tackle questions like: Are those dog breed DNA tests accurate? Are dogs racist? Is Cesar Millan a fraud? And can dogs actually communicate with buttons?
Some helpful links:
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Have feedback for No Such Thing or an idea for a new episode? Send us an email at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com.